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Regarding Aditya-L1, the year 2026 will be truly unique.

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – which was placed into space recently – can observe our star when it reaches the peak of its solar cycle.

According to research, it comes approximately every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent could be the planet's poles swapping positions.

This period marked by intense activity. It sees the Sun transition from peaceful to violent and features a huge increase in the frequency of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of fire that erupt from the solar corona.

Composed of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and can attain a speed exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can travel in any direction, even toward our planet. At top speed, it would take a CME about half a day to traverse the 150 million km between Earth and the Sun.

"During typical or quiet periods, our star emits two to three CMEs a day," says an astrophysics expert. "Next year, we expect there will be 10 or more daily."

Studying coronal mass ejections ranks among the most important research goals of India's first solar observatory. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to learn about the Sun at the centre of our solar system, and two, because activities occurring on the Sun endanger infrastructure on Earth and in orbit.

Impacts on Earth and Space Infrastructure

CMEs rarely pose a direct threat to human life, yet they impact life on Earth by causing magnetic disturbances that impact the weather in near space, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, orbit.

"The most beautiful manifestations of a CME are auroras, which are a clear example that charged particles from Sun are travelling to Earth," the scientist explains.

"However, they may cause electronic systems aboard spacecraft fail, disable power grids and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Historical Solar Events

• The most powerful solar storm ever recorded occurred during the Carrington Event that disabled communication systems across the globe
• During 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network failed, leaving six million people without power for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disturbed air traffic control, leading to chaos across Scandinavia and some other European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, a CME caused 38 commercial satellites being lost

With capability to see what happens on the Sun's corona and detect solar activity or solar eruption in real time, record its temperature at origin and track its path, it can work as a forewarning to switch off electrical systems and satellites redirecting them to safety.

Aditya-L1's Special Capability

There are other solar missions observing the Sun, Aditya-L1 holds an edge compared to rivals regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"The instrument is the exact size enabling it to nearly mimic lunar coverage, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere permitting continuous observation of almost all solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, throughout the year, including during solar events," says the expert.

In other words, the coronagraph acts like a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the solar glare allowing scientists continuously observe its faint outer corona – something the real Moon provide only during eclipses.

Additionally, this is the only mission that can study eruptions in visible light, enabling it to measure a CME's temperature and heat energy – crucial data that show how strong of an eruption if it headed our direction.

Preparation for Peak Period

To prepare for the upcoming peak solar activity period, researchers collaborated to study information gathered from a major CMEs that Aditya-L1 has recorded until now.

This event began in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass totaled billions of tons – the iceberg that struck the ship weighed much less.

At origin, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius with energy equivalent was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – in comparison nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller and 21 kilotons respectively.

Even though the numbers make it sound massive, the scientist describes it as a "medium-sized" one.

The asteroid which wiped out prehistoric life on our planet carried enormous energy and when the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see eruptions with energy content equal to greater levels.

"I consider the CME we analyzed to have occurred when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the standard that we'll be using assessing what to expect during solar maximum arrives," he says.

"The learnings from this will assist in work out the countermeasures to implement to protect satellites in orbit. Additionally, they'll aid achieving deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he concludes.